


Fool's Gold

by moonix



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Breaking Up and Getting Back Together, Dates, F/F, Flirting, Heist Wives, One-Shot, Post-Movie, Roadtrip, Summer, but also pre-movie, girlfriend clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 16:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15417210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: For as long as Lou could think, Debbie Ocean had always been a bad idea. The trouble with bad ideas was that Lou was very fond of them.





	Fool's Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luvanderwon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvanderwon/gifts).



> No warnings that I can think of other than mentions of alcohol :)

For as long as Lou could think, Debbie Ocean had always been a bad idea.

The trouble with bad ideas was that Lou was very fond of them. Debbie was the kind of bad idea that Lou at sixteen would have fallen in love with, like stealing old motorcycles and fixing them up in her old man’s garage, or smoking an entire packet of cigarettes behind Walmart and throwing up in the bushes. That kind of bad idea. Ill-advised, exhilarating, and doomed from the start.

After they broke up – if it could be called that: from where Lou was standing, it looked a lot like Debbie walking out on her after one of their many late-night arguments, except this time she never came back. Lou, left with Debbie’s stuff intertwined with her own and a phone number she didn’t have the heart to delete, did the only thing she was good at and committed to a new bad idea.

So: after they broke up, Lou bought two warehouses and turned one into a club.

No: after they broke up, Lou drank two bottles of wine by herself and threw the rest at the wall. The stains remained, though Lou made peace with them. She was good at that, at least.

She threw out Debbie’s clothes, then ran back outside in the rain and fished them out of the trash again. Washing Debbie’s perfume out of them was moderately cathartic. It was Lou’s version of a big bonfire in the backyard, and she forced herself to wear Debbie’s horrible old sweat jacket one day at a time, until the fabric stopped feeling like heartbreak and betrayal and started to turn back into worn-out, dusky pink fleece.

Like a reverse magical-girl transformation. Or something.

The club was a great outlet, because it was struggling financially from the get-go and required her full attention. Lou only employed girls, because, okay, maybe she didn’t quite trust men after Debbie left her for one. But it was fun, too. While it lasted.

Story of her life, really.

She sold some of Debbie’s jewellery and bought a second-hand suit in every colour of the rainbow and then some. She mixed vodka with water, cut her own bangs, fixed up a bike here and there and found the right buyers for them but never kept one for herself. She slept in late and ate breakfast in the bathtub upstairs, head still thrumming with last night’s bass and eyes drifting among the clouds beyond the window, foam frothing up to her jaw. She painted her toe nails. She washed her hair with Debbie’s honey lavender shampoo until the bottle was empty, squeezing out the last drops in the palm of her hand.

For the next five years, Lou kept her head down and her feet up, and poured every ounce of herself into her club and her girls and her bikes.

So what if she had to dilute her heart a bit sometimes. The trick was to find the perfect ratio where no one would be any the wiser, and Lou had always been good at that.

When the text from Debbie came through, it felt like finding a key she’d lost long ago and didn’t have a use for anymore. Lou traced her fingertips over the grooves and indents of the words and thought, _of course_. Of course she’d text. Of course she’d come back.

Of course it was a bad idea.

She texted back, unlocking the door and inviting Debbie Ocean back into her life.

As bad ideas went, at least this time Lou got a drop-dead gorgeous Harley out of it, and enough money to renovate and save her club and her girls. She put her favourite in charge and left them enough high-end vodka to drown a city, and then she got the hell out of town with only the clothes on her back, like she and Debbie used to do in the good old days.

The heist had gone off as smoothly as could be expected and they’d all gone their separate ways. Lou had thought it all one last hurrah – except Debbie caught up with her in the next town over, at a rundown gas station where Lou bought a bag of sour apple rings and a sugar-heady energy drink to keep her going, because the espresso was shit and she needed _something_.

“Can I hitch a ride?” Debbie asked, leaning on the hood of some terrible, flashy car with her lacy bra peeking out of her barely-buttoned blouse. Lou had never cared much about bras, but she could get behind the concept when it was dressed up like this.

“Did you buy that or hotwire it?” Lou said, nodding at the car. Debbie just smiled and shrugged, neon light glazing her shoulders, and held up a spare helmet. Lou motioned for her to follow and got back on her bike.

They drove through the night, Debbie’s arms wrapped around Lou’s middle like they’d never belonged anywhere else. Lou felt elated, the night wind whistling through her, the road a hot, gleaming promise beneath her. They chased the sunrise and stopped at a 24/7 diner for lukewarm coffee and greasy breakfast, feeding each other fries across the sticky table and making a game of who could tip the sleepy waitress the most outrageous amount.

“I thought about you a lot, in prison,” Debbie said when they stepped back outside into a golden cascade of sunlight. She was always so proud, but in that moment she looked like any girl, half-shy and half-mischievous, with her hair up in a messy bun and the chewed-up straw of her milkshake poking out of the corner of her mouth.

“Did you?” Lou asked.

“We were a good team,” Debbie hummed, hitching her oversized sunglasses back up the bridge of her nose.

“The best,” Lou said. Sweat was starting to collect under her bangs and yesterday’s make-up felt dry and itchy on her face. She startled a little when a hand wound its way into her palm, squeezing briefly.

“The best,” Debbie agreed, and tugged her back to the bike.

They picked up necessities on the way to the next motel, where they showered and crashed for a few hours to avoid the worst of the heat. Debbie laughed at Lou for buying a ten pack of black undershirts and Lou pulled Debbie’s old sweat jacket out of her saddle bag and tossed it in her face. That shut her up nicely, but the way she looked at Lou after felt like stepping outside an air-conditioned building into a blast of midday heat, and Lou rolled over to face the wall instead.

“Let’s go to a museum,” Debbie said once they reached the next town. Lou snorted, accidentally blowing powdered sugar from her donut at Debbie.

“I swear to god,” she hummed, thumbing at the shock of white on Debbie’s collarbone. “If you’re trying to pull me into one of your schemes again…”

“No schemes,” Debbie said solemnly. “For now. Big girl promise. It’s not that kind of museum, anyway.”

She pointed at a sad old sign, advertising a local jam museum. Lou shook her head and laughed, enjoying the way the breeze combed through her hair. She felt tacky under her riding leathers, though the heat had boiled down to a pleasant simmer.

“Fine,” she said. “Knock yourself out.”

The jam museum was predictably boring. It featured a lot of faded vintage advertisements, historical facts about brands that had long since died out, and a pathetic collection of rusty machines used in jam-making. The gift shop didn’t even have a decent selection of actual, edible jam, so Debbie took them to a cocktail bar to drown the disappointment in booze and copious amounts of nacho dip.

“That is the worst date I’ve ever been on,” Lou chuckled, sucking cheese off her thumb. The sky outside was the beady pink of rosé wine and the speakers above their table were playing the Dixie Chicks on repeat.

“Is it?” Debbie asked, voice dripping like honey and syrup. “A date?”

Lou looked at her, still dressed in one of Lou’s many black undershirts and a pair of baggy three-quarter jeans, her old pink sweat jacket tied cheekily around her waist. Her make-up was on point, as always, but she looked more casual and relaxed than Lou had seen her in a long while.

“Isn’t it?” she countered, sipping at her gin and tonic. They held each other’s gaze across the table and it felt familiar and easy, like they’d gone back in time to the bingo tables.

Debbie leaned forward, arms crossed on the table and eyes twinkling.

“Alright,” she murmured around a rich smile. “Fair enough.”

Lou thought about kissing her and let her gaze drop out the window again to where the sun was slowly dipping below the horizon. After a long while she picked up her drink and knocked it back.

“You’re the worst idea I’ve ever had,” she muttered against the rim of the glass.

“And yet,” Debbie grinned and reached over to pluck the empty glass out of her hand. She stood up to get them both new drinks, but Lou caught her by the fabric of the sweat jacket around her hip and tugged her back.

“And yet,” she echoed, before leaning in to kiss her. Debbie smiled against her lips and slid into her lap easily. She was still holding their glasses in her hands, but it was kind of hot; Lou’s palms could freely cup her curves like they’d been moulded to do just that without being distracted by Debbie’s hands. Lou slid her thumbs up under the hem of Debbie’s top and savoured the way the rasp of calloused skin against soft made Debbie gasp into the kiss.

“Still the worst date?” Debbie murmured when they parted, nudging their foreheads together for a moment. “Worse even than that guy you went bowling with in high school, when you still thought you were straight?”

“I never should have told you about that,” Lou huffed and pinched her waist, then soothed over the spot and rolled the skin gently between her fingers. “Weren’t you getting more drinks?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Debbie hummed, abandoning their glasses on the table. “I think we should go back to the motel.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mhm.” Debbie kissed her again, light and sweet like cotton candy, then her mouth curled into a soft smirk. “I have a plan I want to discuss with you.”

Lou groaned.

“Worst idea,” she reminded her, before nudging her off her lap.

“You love it,” Debbie laughed. “Come on, I promise it’s not a museum this time…”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated :)


End file.
